INFO

● Either read from top to bottom or navigate the Outline on the left-hand side. If you do not
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● These notes were not made with the intention of being all-encompassing of the material
presented in these books, but rather what was found interesting. These notes are neither
intended to generate profit nor to serve as a substitute for the books.
● These three books were read over the Summer of 2019 and were heavily enjoyed,
however, as these books were bought on a family member’s account and not a personal
account, a review was not able to be left due to money spending requirements by
Amazon. One may call this set of notes, being shared with others, as a secondary sort of
“nod of appreciation” towards those books. Should anyone seek more details on a
specific point, they will be happily provided as personal time permits.
● Feel free to make a personal copy of the notes or just keep this doc for yourself.

KEY
● Southern Cunning: Folkloric Witchcraft in the American South by Aaron Oberon
● Backwoods Witchcraft: Conjure & Folk Magic From Appalachia by Jake Richards
● A Deed Without a Name: Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft by Lee Morgan
General/Unsorted
● Circles used when something is being conjured. Draw a circle and dance around the
circle until the Devil appears.
○ Circles utilized to create a liminal space to meet with spirits.
○ Crossroads are inherently liminal, circles need to be made liminal.
● Tool: Conjure Bone
○ A witch with this talisman really only needs one talisman.
○ Rite of the Rescued Animal, Down by the River
○ Pg. 55-61
● Bottles can be layered by placing the heaviest material on the bottom and carefully
stacking everything up until the very top.
● Ritual ending gestures: clapping four times, flipping over a ritual item, placing a cloth
over working table.
● When the mountains formed during the time of Pangea, they covered half the world.
When the land of Pangea broke apart, it carried remains of this mountain chain across
the globe; forming the mountains of the British Isles, the Scottish Highlands,
Scandinavia, and the Little Atlas mountain range of Morocco.
● When restless or troublesome spirits come to haunt the household, the potato charm is
utilized. One acquires a whole, unwashed potato and a small object that belonged to the
deceased. The potato is cut in half and each side is hollowed out, made large enough for
the item to fit snugly inside. The halves are then reunited, bound with red yarn, and
pinned shut with nails. The charm is then taken to the grave of the spirit, where it is left.
The spirit will then be bound to the cemetery until they fully cross over.
● Jar of money by the door to keep money flowing in. Filled with money found on the
sidewalk or elsewhere, collected in anything. Cornmeal sprinkled at the bottom to keep
money off the hard bottom, and thus, the family out of hard times.
● Sprinkle “new” salt (a container or packet of salt that has never been opened) in the
shoes for good fortune and success.
● The feet are an opening for possible conjure to come in, they are also the exit by which
you can remove it. This also applied to baths. To dispel something, wash downward from
head to toe; to draw something to you, wash upward from the feet to the head.
● Quincunx - Pattern of four points and corners with a central mark, recalling the symbol of
the cross and the crossroads. Home to the Black Man, to lost souls who wander about,
and to the dead in general. Symbolizes protection, sacrifice, and revelation.
● Left and Right
○ Irish lore is filled with formulas that prescribed things to a certain side. I.e. Nail in
the left hand or left pocket to protect conjure from the little people.
○ In Appalachian formulas, the left side is symbolic of warding, protection, and
getting rid of something, such as tossing spilled salt over the left shoulder to
 “blind the Devil”. Left side deflects and gently brings, right enacts and gives
influence. Can also be used to repel or draw, but mostly when the work is to
affect others in some way.
○ To protect from conjure, items can be carried on either side.
● When I collect the fresh blood of an animal or fish, I will drain some of it first on the
ground or in the water to “give it back”.
● Pg. 132 for Playing Card Divination
● Write a prayer down on paper, creating a “ticket”. Write your name and birthday three
times to connect it to you or someone elf if other connections (hair, nail clippings,
clothes) aren’t available. On either side, draw a cross and place one in the middle of
your name and birthdate.
○ The date can be exchanged for a person's age or location.
○ Write the problem down on a strip of cloth or paper, which is struck out and
flanked by two sets of three crosses.
○ Fold papers and add to charms, hidden in the house, worn in the shoe, etc.
○ Papers are only burned when something needs to be released or removed. If
bringing something to you, fold towards you. Between each fold, turn clockwise if
bringing towards you, counterclockwise if away. Folded three times in total.
○ Continued info on page 152
● Bestiary: Malandanti, Mazzeri, Revenant, Werewolves, Vampire
○ Vampires and Werewolves: Two Hearted
○ What has been lost is not our ability to make contract with those forces, but
instead the systems that were once in place to order them in society.
● The left (receptive) foot that the person places under the right (active) foot of the
recipient.
Biblical Blasphemy
● Sign your name in blood in ​The Book of Revelations​ to steal a bible’s power for your
own.
● Psalm 68 Curse, Psalm 91 Protective
● The Psalms (and other Books) can be used in magic by writing down the verse number,
writing the verse itself, or tearing the verse straight from the book.
● End works with “nema”, an inversion of “amen”.
● It is perhaps these other ‘Watchers’ that followed Azazel in his interest in the ‘daughters
of man’ that might give us a clue as to the meaning behind the love between the human
witch and the daimonic fetch-mate.
Cursing and Counter-Cursing
● When you as a witch send a curse you run the risk of having a counter curse used.
Curses should be thought through for a number of reasons, and the risk of counter
cursing is one of them.
○ Speak the names of the Holy Trinity, put your pockets inside out, wrap a piece of
silver and place it on your person, or draw a ring around yourself.
○ If your home has been cursed get some dirt from your yard and mix with with the
ashes of your own hair, and beat it mercilessly with the Club. This will kill a
witch’s influence over you so long as you do not allow the witch to take anything
from you.
● Hair and nails also act as a decoy, luring any tricks to it first, because curses take the
shortest route to the target.
● To remove curses or tricks, carry a piece of coal in the right pocket or shoe. Once the
coal has diminished to dust and crumbs, the curse has been removed.
Flight
● Sleep with a Skeleton Key under the pillow to increase the chances of flight during sleep.
● Tool: Ointments Pg. 100-102
● We need to make a conscious effort to cease categorizing ‘visualisation’ and ‘vision’ as
two hard and fast categories. Instead. Try seeing what you view in your mind as being
steps of a ladder, with a deeper state of vision building with each step.
● Being your attempt to cross the hedge by focus on your second skin, all witches have
the ability to expel or create a kind of ‘second skin’ either in the form of a Double or an
animal.
○ This more subtle aspect of the physical body needs to be ‘fed’ and invigorated for
a successful extension of consciousness, for a ‘flight’ to occur. Bring together all
of your urges and longings, desires and excess energy that you have in your
body and consciously feed it into that tingling feeling.
● The way you cross the hedge will in essence depend on what powers reach out to you.
● Reminder that it isn’t just us that enters the Otherworld, but the Otherworld entering and
rearranging us.
● Every place has the capacity to be a location for passage between the worlds. A good
relationship with a powerful site where crossing is easy is useful. Some places are better
than others.
○ A site can be easily useful or useless to someone who does not share the right
stories. The narrative or ‘deep myth’ is a form of meeting place between spirits
and man. The relationship between myth, people, and spirits connected with the
site as the power of a particular crossing point.
● The relationship between location-synergy and the Sight. Sight and site.
● Deep lakes, pools, sections of the oceans that contained a ‘winch’ could suck you down.
Winches as the name of a place where access to the Underworld was very easy.
● These sites as the embodiment of moving power in the land; its nerve, vein, and vital
network. Unless they are well disposed to you, you will not be allowed to use the
doorways that are guarded by the “guardians”.
Folklore
● An old English belief warns that it is unlucky to eat blackberries on or after September
29, as that’s when the Devil steps over the bushes with his cloven hooves. Those who
do are said to die before the year ends. In Scotland, it’s believed the Devil spat on the
bush after landing on it from his fall from heaven. It’s also said that the blackberry bush
provided the thorns for Christ’s crown on the cross; and many still believe the burning
bush was a blackberry.
● The luna moth; don’t disturb or catch or bad luck is brought, because they carry souls of
the dead and messages from the other side.
● Speaking with spirits through knocking on tables to get their attention.
Gardening
● Turn the dirt over with the debris of the garden to fertilize the soil.
● For Pests: Mix soapy water and spray around base of a plant. Sprinkle mixture of
cinnamon, tobacco, and cornstarch. (Tobacco deters rabbit and deer).
● Poor blood from meat into the soul, right at the root of the plant.
● Use strips of old towels or cloth to bind plants. The older and more worn they get white
outside, the tougher the knot becomes while also allowing the stalk room to grow.
○ Still occasionally loosen the knot!!!!!
● Folklore of a region for frost dates. Even numbered days. Never plant on a Friday.
Initiation and Familiars
● Wilby states that cunning folk in Early-Modern Britain typically had their first interaction
with their familiar after experiencing trauma.
● “...certain gods as familiar spirits.”
● Witch Fire is often felt as a literal heat within the body. Something that causes the body
to move, to shake, to dance. Letting the Witch Fire move through you can almost seem
like possession, an abandonment of civility. The fire changes you from within and brings
you closer to the wilderness, the ferocity of the land and the ferocity within yourself. To
let the fire burn within you is to accept the danger and ecstasy of witchcraft. This is what
makes witchcraft so different from other forms of magic. It is not just correct methods, or
petitions to spirits to make changes, but the assumption of the wild fire from inside of you
that changes the world around you. It is not possible to light the fire without being
changed.
● “No person can make another witch.”
● Killing the Moon Ritual (Initiation)
● Sometimes initiation can result in physical illness, life changing events, job losses or
emotional upheaval... The rituals do not guarantee that you will experience this, but any
successful initiation comes at a cost.
● I could only take one hand outstretched to me. I chose, and the other spirits left. I got
better, and I was changed.
● In addition to all of that, I was presented with hundreds of chances were witchcraft
became necessary to solve problems. I had never needed witchcraft to really solve
problems before then, and that was what this initiation was about for me.
● The bond of initiation is like a marriage. Marriage is not necessary to show your love to
someone, and sometimes it makes things that much more messy. Still it is a powerful
bond that when done well and maintained in a healthy way can bring people together for
the long haul. Initiation brings you closer to your spirits, it shows you how you can rely on
each other, and how to teach others in ways that no one else can.
● A type of spiritual contagion was believed in and consciously practiced.
● The way that a future witch is called is determined by what they are called on to do. It is
also quite clear from the beginning that not all witches are being called to work for the
same forces.
● The fire of your spiritual work will consume the vital forces in your body and you must
therefore be very vigilant about the maintenance of your health.
● A failure to understand this economy of power exchange between witch and familiar
spirit is part of the reason so many fall by the wayside to madness, illness, or early death
upon this path.
● “The economy of vitality.”
● When one no longer has the vital force to reciprocate with those powers, when one
forgets that the body is the alembic of transformation, the temple in which human and
 daimon meet, as well as the sacrificial pit and the sacrificial flame, and does not treat it
as such, it is seldom long before the body and fleshly brain are no longer able to sustain
the touch of the fire.
● The harsh truth about the power you gain at this time is that it isn’t going to stay with
you, at least not in the form that it currently takes.
● A half-done making can leave a person very vulnerable and unstable.
Philosophical Witchcraft
● “Being a witch is something that will never fully make sense.”
● This path is about getting back our claws and rediscovering the faces of the spirits.
● The yardstick against which modern witchcraft should be measured as a matter of
respect for the potency of the powers we intend to engage with; these people
experienced the truth of these phenomena so strongly they were willing to risk their lives
to engage with them. Or perhaps even more simply, they literally had no choice.
● When we try to re-imagine a shamanic universe with an Upperworld / Middleworld /
Underworld dynamic, it is easier to get in touch with if we are aware that they also exist
in our bodies.
● We have, in our own language, a word for being ‘marked’ in the psychological sort of
way. ‘Fey’ before it was confounded with ‘fay’ encountering much subsequent abuse,
meant both ‘visionary’, ‘touched’, and possible ‘fated to die’. The true shaman or witch
does of course die sooner than everyone else, one way or the other.
● Your mental universe does not have a concept of something that is ‘without substance’,
thus making it more possible to understand the notion of how ‘more than one body’ could
exist.
● Doubles, Second Skins, Shadows
○ The Shadow as the soul that lives on after death and can become detached from
the body in dreams or after death.
○ “The ordinary dreamer goes forth in Shadow form, something that is generally
invisible but sometimes be perceived by those with The Sight, whereas the witch
is able to project the Shadow into forms.
○ Sending the Shadow out to occupy someone else’s and use their vitality instead.
○ The Shadow is the sentient part and the ‘Skin’ a kind of vessel.
● The Skins are other forms that may be animated by the Shadow, but the daimonic
aspect of consciousness is the most mysterious of all, subtly working through the
Shadow at all times, a direct spark of divine fire, the ‘godhead’ dimension of the self that
few ever become aware of.
● We have been conditioned since childhood by such phrases as ‘it’s just a dream’, with
the emphasis on ‘just’ implying that a dream state has a lesser ontological value than a
waking one. Such conditioning can take a bit of undoing. It cannot be undone through
reason alone. It is only through the experience of the Other, and complete reweaving of
the Psyche through initiatory death and rebirth that such a change can occur.
● If we understand the spiritual dynamic behind the traditions of ‘drenching the ghosts’ it
can help us to better manage power exchange and also to understand why these
eruptions of harm-doing have become such a large part of the witchcraft legacy.
○ Some witches had the hungry dead working through them.
Protection
● A haint tree is a tree that has blue bottles (other glass as well) hanging onto or from the
limbs. The purpose of the haint tree was to catch devils that would try to sneak into your
house and leave the devils to be burned at sunrise.
● Paint a door red to keep folks with ill intent from coming into the home.
● Witch Bottle: Piss in a mason jar, throw in broken glass, mirrors, barbed wire, sulfur, and
bullets. If a spirit or spell comes looking for you they will mistake the urine for you and
get caught in the bottle. (Curses always take the shortest route, in Cursing and
Counter-Cursing!)
● Old preachers anointing the inner rim of their hat with blessed oil when doing a funeral to
keep the haints away.
● Keep the head covered in graveyards; vulnerable to haints hopping on your back and
following you home.
○ Head is the crown of the soul, eyes are windows, and chest is its seat. Head acts
like the roof of the home.
● Old shoes hold the shape of the wearer’s foot, and in this way they hold that person’s
essence. Dusted with baby powder, salt, red pepper, and other things at hand for
protection from conjure, illness, and accident.
Witch Father
● The initiator was originally called ​The Devil,​ but more honest to call this initiator ​a ​devil;
one of many.
● Witch Father = The Devil = Black Woodsman = Old Scratch = Satan = Lucifer = Pan =
Azazel = Cernunnos
● Go to crossroads at midnight, bring a small offering of whiskey or beer. Repeat several
times, allow him to teach spells and rituals not found elsewhere, take advice on personal
issues, kick back and enjoy your offerings with him. Return home never looking back.
● Not a singular entity.
● Black Woodsman
○ Devil of the trees. Bridge between what is wild and dangerous reaching out
towards humans.
○ Also the Wild Huntsman.
● Your Witch Father may have horns or scales or wings. He may be She of the stars, or
the dirt, or the sea. They may come to you in many shapes and sizes and varying levels
of humanity. They may be spirits of the land, or of blood, or of spirit.
● The Cherokee recognized the Black Man or Purple Man of the west, who brought death.
(The Black Man has many incarnations throughout American folklore, as he is often
thought to be the Devil or some dealing spirit who waits at the crossroads. The
distinction between the two isn’t clear, so they may be the same spirit called upon in
witchcraft and death spells.)
● Each area that covenanted with a ‘devil’ of this kind worked with a local avatar or
representative of the Master.
Books to Read
● The Silver Bullet
● Harry Hyatt (Five Volumes of Southern Folklore)
● The Return of the Dead: the transparent veil of the pagan mind